Celebrate National Fried Chicken Day With Five Styles

It’s national fried chicken day, friends, and that news might be particularly important to the 16% of you who, according to a recent poll, actually admitted you would marry fried chicken. Marry it.

While your dream union might not technically be legal (yet), you might as well take this convenient opportunity to eat fried chicken every which way you can find it, which are manifold in this chicken loving town.

In a Sandwich:

There are chicken sandwiches galore in this town, but one of our favorites is the Hot Gai at Soursop, which takes the basic formula of soft bread, crispy chicken, and something pickled to the next level. The crispy chicken here is Thai spiced and topped with chili oil, massaman mayo, and aromatic Thai basil.

Over Waffles:

In that same survey, apparently six out of ten Americans said they liked their chicken over waffles, and if you’re one of that happy majority this one’s a no brainer: You gotta go to Wild Chix. because they’re serving both savory and sweet. We like the opulent What The Cluck, a baroque blend of fried chicken, fried eggs, fried bacon, and Sriracha mayo, testing the absorptive limits of those little waffle squares.

Popcorn style:

Nobody really understands the snacky soul of popcorn chicken like the Taiwanese, where it’s served on every street corner out of greasy paper cones. Song La makes a mean rendition, extra crispy, perfectly bite sized, and pepped up with more of that Thai basil we like so much. Maybe if you ask nicely they’ll even roll you a paper cone.

HOT (and we mean hot):

If the apocryphal story behind Nashville fried chicken is true, the cheating husband who inspired this wildly popular variation on the battered bird was probably served something close to Tumble 22’s Fire in the Hole level spice. Those of us who are more virtuous (or less brave) can start with low level wimpy and work our way up.

With Biscuits:

Brand new startup Bird Bird Biscuit is the game to beat here. While they serve both sweet and savory renditions on the classic biscuit sandwich (with a biscuit recipe painstakingly engineered to support sandwich fillings, natch), you can’t go wrong with the Queen Beak, which kicks the universally beloved chicken and biscuit combo up a notch with bacon infused chipotle mayo, plus a healthy smear of hot cayenne and black pepper honey.